"This book examines the complexity of World of Warcraft from a variety of perspectives, exploring the cultural and social implications of the proliferation of ever more complex digital gameworlds.The contributors have immersed themselves in the World of Warcraft universe, spending hundreds of hours as players (leading guilds and raids, exploring moneymaking possibilities in the in-game auction house, playing different factions, races, and classes), conducting interviews, and studying the game design - as created by Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer, and as modified by player-created user interfaces. The analyses they offer are based on both the firsthand experience of being a resident of Azeroth and the data they have gathered and interpreted.The contributors examine the ways that gameworlds reflect the real world - exploring such topics as World of Warcraft as a "capitalist fairytale" and the game's construction of gender; the cohesiveness of the gameworld in terms of geography, mythology, narrative, and the treatment of death as a temporary state; aspects of play, including "deviant strategies" perhaps not in line with the intentions of the designers; and character - both players' identification with their characters and the game's culture of naming characters." -- BOOK JACKET.

A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture. In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces. Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.

In this publication, eighteen scholars examine the increasing role of digital media technologies in identity construction through play. This interdisciplinary collection argues that present-day play and games are not only appropriate metaphors for capturing postmodern human identities, but are in fact the means by which people create their identity.

"Introduction to Digital Culture: Living and Thinking in an Information Age" brings together essays on the phenomenon of the Internet and its influence on the humans who create and use it. In a series of accessible readings, this unique anthology explores the ways in which the everyday use of digital media shapes our lives and culture. The essays examine a range of perspectives on the most relevant topics for student readers, including attention, online identity, video games and online role-play, digital-age creativity and piracy, virtuality, and cyberculture. Students are invited to analyze the ethics of online presence through readings by contemporary ethicists. The readings in Introduction to Digital Culture have proven successful in creating an engaging classroom experience and encouraging vibrant discourse among students. Each selection is supplemented with discussion questions and recommendations for further reading and research. This text will appeal to students and instructors across disciplines as a provocative introduction to the social, cultural and ethical questions provoked by life in the Information Age. Tessa Joseph-Nicholas teaches courses on digital culture and cyberculture for the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. She is co-recipient of an Innovations Grant from UNC s Institute for the Arts and Humanities, which will support two years of study, symposia, and creative collaborations on alternative and serious video games.

‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ explores the practices, relationships, consequences, benefits, and outcomes of children’s experiences with, on, and through social media by bringing together a vast array of different ideas about childhood, youth, and young people’s lives. These ideas are drawn from scholars working in a variety of disciplines, and rather than just describing the social construction of childhood or an understanding of children’s lives, this collection seeks to encapsulate not only how young people exist on social media but also how their physical lives are impacted by their presence on social media. One of the aims of this volume in exploring youth interaction with social media is to unpack the structuring of digital technologies in terms of how young people access the technology to use it as a means of communication, a platform for identification, and a tool for participation in their larger social world. During longstanding and continued experience in the broad field of youth and digital culture, we have come to realize that not only is the subject matter increasing in importance at an immeasurable rate, but the amount of textbooks and/or edited collections has lagged behind considerably. There is a lack of sources that fully encapsulate the canon of texts for the discipline or the rich diversity and complexity of overlapping subject areas that create the fertile ground for studying young people’s lives and culture. The editors hope that this text will occupy some of that void and act as a catalyst for future interdisciplinary collections. ‘Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children’s Digital Culture’ will appeal to undergraduate students studying Child and Youth Studies and—given the interdisciplinary nature of the collection— scholars, researchers and students at all levels working in anthropology, psychology, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, media studies, education, and human rights, among others. Practitioners in these fields will also find this collection of particular interest.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. Selfies, blogs and lifelogging devices help us understand ourselves, building on long histories of written, visual and quantitative modes of self-representations. This book uses examples to explore the balance between using technology to see ourselves and allowing our machines to tell us who we are.

Emphasizing an intersectional and transnational approach, this collection examines how social media and digital technologies have impacted the sphere of LGBTQ activism, advocacy, education, empowerment, identity, protest, and self-expression. This edited collection adopts a critical and cultural studies perspective to examine queer cyberculture and presence. Through the lens of representation and identity politics, it explores topics such as race, disability, and colonialism, alongside sexuality and gender. The collection examines how digital technologies have made queer cultural production more expansive and how such technological affordances and platforms have enabled queer cultural practices to be more transformational. Bringing together contributors and case studies from different countries, the contributions grapple with the tensions that arise when visibility, hiddenness, renditions of the self, and collective contractions of identity must be negotiated in a variety of global contexts and explores this influence on contemporary political identities. This book provides an essential introduction to LGBTQ digital cultures for students, researchers, and scholars of media, communication, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to activists wanting to learn more about the transformative potential of digital media and technology in LGBTQ advocacy and empowerment around the globe.